Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1887-07-28
THE PoRTER,s LITTLE GAME.
Not Content with Ordinary Robbery He
Bunkoed the Passengers.


%There is one sleeping car porter in this
country who'll not die poor, If thrift and
smartness count for anything" said gentle
man who has just returned from a trip to
California. .Soon after we left Omaha the
porter of our car began to talk baseball and
to let US all know that he was a baseball
crank He grew rather familiar, too, consid-
ering his station, but nobody objected, for it
Is always best on a cross country trip to keep
on the good. side of the porter. Among the
passengers were several gentlemen who take
little interest in baseball, and so, along in
the afternoon, when the porter told about the
sport some passengers had had the week be-
fore, and suggested that Jus to kill time we
initiate their example, the gemmen maxim
up baseball pool at IS guess, de gemmen
guessin' clostist to de way de fo' league games
comes out to take de pot there were seven
responses After the money had been paid
into the hands Of one who was selected to act
as stakeholder, and the subscribers had written
out their guesses and signed their names to
them, the porter humbly asked permission to
come in.
Though we all thought the chap was dis
playing considerable freshness, so long as he
had suggested the scheme, in which we had
was no one to object. So the porter put up
his S. and filed his guess with the stakeholder.
The next day we got q paper at Cheyenne,
and you can imagine how surprised we were
when we discovered that only one man In the
party had named the four winners, and that
man the porter. The way the fellow grinned
when he put the $40 away in bis pocket made
me feel suspicious, and so, later on, when
another pool Of the same kind was proposed, /
decided to stay oet and keep an eye on the
porter. About 3 o'clockthe train stopped at
a little station, and 1 saw the porter making
a break for the telegraph Office. When he
came out he had a message, which he was
reading eagerly. He sat down in the smok-
ing car and scribbled something on piece of
paper, carefully consulting his message as Lee
did so, and then walked back to the sleeping
car, remarking that he'd give the gemmen q
chance to git a pat Of de stuff back and de-
posted with the stakeholder a five dollar bin
and the slip Of paper I'd seen him writing on
in the smoking car
"Having found out what his game was
took the stakeholder one side and said to him:
This darky is bunkoingus US 1t is now after3
o'clock In New York and Boston it is after
5. The games have been played Wshaven't
been thinking of that, but this darlly has
He just received message telling him which
clabs won, and be has named those clubs here.
and expects to take our money just as he did
yesterday
$50 the stakeholder and took out all the
guesses, changed them all to read the same
clubs that the porter had named, and put them
back. Then we posted the other fellows.
Next day when the returns were opened and
it was found that each guesser had named
the four winners, it was worth five times
s. apiece to US to see the expressions which
chased each each other up and down that
shrewd darky's face. Chicago Herald.